Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Another flaw in human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do Maintenance."

This remark perfectly describes our ignorance towards the important task of Maintenance. Be it regular Maintenance of our car or spending money on house repair, we usually try to avoid these Maintenance jobs on one pretext or the other.

Though we must realize the inherited benefits of doing regular Maintenance. By taking care of our valuables and spending time and money on their regular Maintenance, we could use them for a longer duration of time and get the maximum benefits out of them.

Maintenance is usually one of four types. The first one is Preventive Maintenance (PM). In this Maintenance mechanism, you need to take some extra steps at present to foresee and rectify events that could possibly lead to problems in the future. It is usually done under the guidance of experts, and is beneficial in decreasing unexpected expenses and availing consistent performance.

The second type is Predictive Maintenance (PdM). This Maintenance involves checking the current system health (efficiency check) and identifying areas where problems could occur in the future. This type of Maintenance involves listing future problems, but does not incorporate the measures.

Corrective Maintenance (CM) is the third Maintenance type. It is a retroactive strategy and is used when any failure or fault occurs in the system. The basic objective behind this Maintenance type is to correct the fault soon, with less emphasis on cost and more on time.

The last type is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). This is the latest Maintenance technique, which involves continuous improvement of Maintenance programs in the most cost-effective terms and in a technically feasible manner. RCM focuses on listing past failures and Maintenance history, and emphasizes the functional importance of system components.